Miscellaneous

Samsung is rocketing up the ranks in the portable PC industry, according to the latest stats released Tuesday by iSuppli.

Thanks to hot demand for its Netbooks, the South Korean computer maker shipped 1.9 million mobile PCs (notebooks and Netbooks combined), a 14.6 percent jump from the 1.7 million shipped during the fourth quarter. Those numbers helped Samsung outperform the overall portable PC market, in which shipments declined by 5.4 percent from the prior quarter due to the usual seasonal downturn, noted iSuppli.

Grabbing a 3.9 percent share of the global portable PC business in … Read more

Microsoft has released a version of Silverlight for some implementations of the Symbian mobile operating system, meaning its rich media player will appear on Symbian handsets before it reaches Microsoft-based phones.

The port of Microsoft's rival to Flash was made available to users of the Nokia 5800, N97, and N97 Mini handsets, which run the Symbian-based Nokia S60 5th edition, on Tuesday. The application can be downloaded for free from the Ovi Store.

Microsoft's own Windows Mobile operating system does not yet support Silverlight, nor does it support Adobe's Flash. However, the new Windows Phone 7 platform … Read more

Google has begun work on a new item on a long list of technologies designed to make applications running on the Web more competitive with those that run natively on a machine's operating system: an interface to know which way is up.

The orientation interface plumbing is being built into the WebKit browser project that underlies Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, according to a Google's Chrome issue tracker.

The technology would let the browser provide an application with hardware-supplied information about which way a computing device is being held, information that's particularly useful for mobile … Read more

It was a tough week for smartphones.

Amid anemic sales, Microsoft has decided to halt work on its Kin phone less than two months after the product hit the market. The social media-oriented phone will not make its planned European debut, and Microsoft is shifting the entire Kin team to work on Windows Phone 7, the Microsoft smartphone operating system due out later this year.

The Kin, which made its debut just two months ago at an event in San Francisco, was the result of several years of work by Microsoft and stemmed from its 2008 acquisition of Sidekick maker … Read more

Android users who want to to keep tabs on their Yahoo mail and learn more about their favorite movies should welcome the addition of a couple of new apps to the growing mobile marketplace.

Yahoo announced Thursday the launch of Android apps for its Mail and Messenger programs topped off by a new mobile-search widget. Available free at the Android Market, the new apps support Android 2.0 or higher and are optimized for the Motorola Droid, HTC Incredible, and Google Nexus One, according to Yahoo.

The Yahoo Mail app offers a variety of enhancements optimized for Android, said Yahoo. … Read more

The iPhone still enjoys a commanding lead of all ad requests on AdMob's network. But the growth of Android phones continues to boost the share of Google's OS, according to AdMob's "May 2010 Mobile Metrics Report."

Released Wednesday, the new stats (PDF) peg the iPhone's share of all AdMob ad requests in May at 40 percent, down from almost 50 percent in May 2009. Android's share hit 26 percent, up from 5 percent a year ago.

Google in late May finalized its acquisition of AdMob, which gives the ad network more visibility but … Read more

I'm as concerned as anyone about PC security and I do run anti-malware software. But I'm astonished by the results of a survey conducted by Kelton Research and commissioned by BitDefender that shows that "close to half (49 percent) of Americans with a personal computer would be more likely to safeguard themselves from a potential virus on their PC than a human virus, such as the H1N1 flu."

The survey further found that "only 36 percent are confident they would know the correct course of action if their computer was infected by a virus."… Read more

Sony announced Wednesday that it plans to recall around 535,000 Vaio laptops due to overheating problems.

The company said that a flaw in the temperature control can create an excessive buildup of heat that distorts the shape of the unit. Though Sony hasn't heard of any problems with the Vaio in Japan, it said it received 39 complaints of overheating and distortion from customers abroad.

The company also noted the possibility that the heat buildup could create skin burns but hasn't received any report of this, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

The recall would … Read more

We've got a blockbuster summer on CNET Conversations, and the next big release is Chris Cox, vice president of product at Facebook and second-in-command under CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who, we can only imagine, is taking a break from interviews after a rough outing last month). I'm looking forward to a fresh face from Facebook and, hopefully, a good conversation and some solid answers.

Like it or leave it over privacy issues, Facebook's growth and popularity are unfettered--it is rapidly approaching 500 million users and Zuckerberg recently predicted it will hit a billion in the next three to … Read more